have continually behaved in the same manner, and given me the same uneasiness. Unwilling to lay you under any constraint, I have kept silence for a time, and should be sorry if what I am now saying should give you the smallest annoyance; but, dear Aminé, I beseech you, tell me are not the dishes on our table better than the flesh of dead men?

I had scarcely uttered these last words, when Aminé, who now understood that I had observed her nocturnal proceedings, fell into a most violent passion. Her face was in a flame, her eyes almost started from her head, and she absolutely foamed with rage.

The horrible expression of her face quite alarmed me. I stood perfectly motionless, unable to defend myself against the dreadful design which she was meditating, and at which your majesty will be astonished. In the height of her fury she took a glass of water which was near her, and, dipping her fingers into it, muttered a few words which I could not understand. Then she threw the water in my face, and cried in a furious tone, “Wretch! take the punishment of thy curiosity, and become a dog!”

So soon as Aminé, whom I had never supposed to be a sorceress, had uttered these fiendish words, I found myself suddenly changed into a dog. The surprise and astonishment I felt at a change so sudden and so unexpected at first prevented my running away. This bewilderment of mine gave her an opportunity of taking a stick to beat me; and, in truth, she made use of it upon me with so much violence, that I scarcely know how I escaped being killed on the spot.

I thought to elude her rage by running into the court; but she pursued me thither with the same fury; and, nimble as I tried to be, darting from side to side to avoid her strokes, I could not escape them, and she showered them upon me in great abundance. Tired, at last, with pursuing and beating me, and mortified that she had not killed me as she wished to do, she conceived a new method of effecting her object.

She partly opened the door into the street, in order to crush me as I ran out to make my escape. Dog though I was, I suspected her malicious design; and, as imminent danger often suggests a thought how to preserve life, I took my opportunity, by observing her eyes and motions so cleverly as to defeat her vigilance, and passed through the door quickly enough to save my life, and escaped her vengeance with no further mischief than having the end of my tail a little squeezed as the door closed behind me.

The pain I felt made me cry and howl as I ran along the street. This occasioned other dogs to pursue and worry me. To avoid them, I ran into the shop of a man who dressed and sold sheep's heads, tongues, and feet, and there I got shelter.